Conservative media unleash anti-gay rhetoric in attacks on Jennings
The latest target in the Glenn Beck-driven conservative media witch hunt for Obama administration "czars" is Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools director Kevin Jennings. In their attacks on Jennings, numerous conservative media figures have resorted to thinly veiled homophobic appeals to paint Jennings, who is gay, as a "radical" "gay activist" with an "agenda" of "promoting homosexuality in schools," and have misrepresented or distorted Jennings' previous comments about religion and tolerance.
In 1995, Jennings noted right wing's use of code words to fearmonger about school safety programs for LGBT students
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh quoted the following from a 1995 speech delivered by Jennings at a Human Rights Campaign Fund Leadership Conference:
"If the radical right can succeed in portraying us as preying on children, we will lose. Their language -- 'promoting homosexuality' is one example -- is laced with subtle and not-so-subtle innuendo that we are 'after their kids.' "
"We must learn from the abortion struggle, where the clever claiming of the term 'pro-life' allowed those who opposed abortion on demand to frame the issue to their advantage, to make sure that we do not allow ourselves to be painted into a corner before the debate even begins." [WorldNetDaily, 9/17/09]
Media conservatives attack Jennings with extreme, fearmongering rhetoric
Erik Rush: Jennings is a "radical homosexual druggie." Rush wrote in a WorldNetDaily commentary that Jennings is "a radical homosexual who ... has advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, and written unapologetically about his own drug use." Rush added, "One has to ask oneself why it is that Obama repeatedly chooses some of the most wildly inappropriate individuals one could conceive of to serve in high-level positions. A radical homosexual druggie for his 'safe schools czar'? It's practically inconceivable." Rush continued, "Obama, being a creature of the farthest left, has no qualms whatever about allowing activist homosexuals -- or people who are soft on drugs -- to set the moral agenda for this country; the more dysfunctional and enslaved to sensualism we are, the more easily manipulated we will be. And going after the children, as we have learned, is nothing new." [WorldNetDaily, 10/1/09]
Washington Times: "Jennings has made extremely radical statements promoting homosexuality in schools." The Washington Times editorial board wrote, "Mr. Jennings has made extremely radical statements promoting homosexuality in schools and about his utter contempt for religion that render him unsuitable for a prestigious White House appointment." [The Washington Times, 9/28/09]
Limbaugh: Jennings "is a guy promoting homosexuality in the schools." Rush Limbaugh stated: "[I]f you wonder why the libs are really ticked off that [director] Roman Polanski might be extradited to face the music on that long-ago act with the 13-year-old girl, Quaaludes and rape, understand that Obama's safe school czar is a guy promoting homosexuality in the schools and encouraged a 15-year-old kid to have a homosexual relationship with an older man, and even facilitated it. As I say, Snerdley, I wasn't even going to get to this today, but you asked me about Polanski, and that's that." [Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, 9/28/09]
Hannity: "[T]his is a guy that's advocated promoting homosexuality in schools." Fox News' Sean Hannity stated that "this is a guy that's advocated promoting homosexuality in schools. This is a guy we have talked about his past. He's had contempt for religion, et cetera, et cetera. ... Isn't the issue here that what they're teaching oftentimes, value-wise, contradicts what parents are teaching? And isn't that morally wrong?" He later added, "I don't know what it is about liberals. I think they think they have the right to raise our kids. I mean, you know, the idea that you would promote whatever your agenda, on sexuality, any controversial issue." [Fox News' Hannity, 9/25/09]
Malkin: "[C]ontroversial homosexual rights' advocate" Jennings founded "controversial" organization which "aggressively pushes sexually explicit" books. As an example of the Obama administration's "radicalism," Michelle Malkin wrote that "the White House has embraced controversial homosexual rights' advocate Kevin Jennings as 'Safe Schools czar.' Jennings founded the controversial GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), which aggressively pushes sexually explicit, age-inappropriate books and lesson plans on alternative lifestyles." [MichelleMalkin.com, 9/25/09]
Dobbs guest Tony Perkins says "bizarre" Jennings seeks "to mainstream homosexuality in schools." On his radio show, Lou Dobbs stated, "There's suddenly a major political storm around him, charges that he has promoted homosexuality in schools, acknowledged past drug abuse, at one time demonstrating contempt for religion itself. Can any of that be true?" Perkins replied: "Well, unfortunately it is. I mean, this guy is bizarre, and it shows just how radical this administration is in pushing forward policies. ... This guy -- he established GLSEN ... to mainstream homosexuality in the schools." Perkins added, "This is an agenda that is being targeted all the way down to kindergarten. So this is -- the idea that this guy is heading up a safe and drug-free school program, and that he is advocating the expansion of homosexuality in the school and the curriculum" and that "people send their kids to school to get an education, and not to be recruited into a network of sexual behavior, whether it's homosexual behavior or heterosexual behavior." [United Stations Radio Networks' The Lou Dobbs Show, 9/24/09]
Fox News' Kilmeade claims Jennings "promoted homosexuality in schools" and "expressed contempt for religion." During a Fox & Friends segment, co-host Brian Kilmeade stated, "[T]he safe school czar position was actually from George Bush's administration in 2002. President Bush said we need something like this. But maybe this wasn't the job -- this wasn't the resume he thought he'd get: Former schoolteacher who has promoted homosexuality in schools. Also, he has a -- he details a report on how he did not report an incident with an underage student who had sex with an older man, and also has expressed contempt for religion. So, as you expand the resume, it might not be the perfect candidate." [Fox News' Fox & Friends, 9/24/09]
FoxNews.com: Jennings "has advocated promoting homosexuality in schools." FoxNews.com reported that Jennings "is a former schoolteacher who has advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, expressed his contempt for religion and detailed an incident in which he did not report an underage student who told him he was having sex with older men." The article also stated that GLSEN "has also been accused of promoting homosexuality in schools." [FoxNews.com, 9/23/09]
On Hannity, Noelle Nikpour said "gay activist" Jennings is Obama's most dangerous czar. On his Fox News show, Hannity asked Republican strategist Noelle Nikpour, "Who do you think is the most dangerous?" Nikpour answered: "Well, I think it's Kevin Jennings. Not only that, that he's a gay activist, but he was part of the GLISTEN. He was the former director for GLISTEN. They held a conference in which techniques for, I think it was, homosexuality, how to perform different techniques. That's insane." The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore then added, "Remember, we -- used to be that sex education was putting condoms on bananas. Lord knows what they're going to do now." [Hannity, 9/18/09 (from Nexis)]
WorldNetDaily: Jennings boasted about "us[ing] the concept of 'safety' in schools to promote homosexual advocacy in public schools." In a WorldNetDaily "exclusive," Unruh wrote that GLSEN "promotes homosexuality in schools" and that Jennings "once boasted that he introduced homosexual advocacy into the school system in Massachusetts by manipulating the message presented to lawmakers. ... [H]e gave a speech in which he described how he has used the concept of 'safety' in schools to promote homosexual advocacy in public schools in Massachusetts." [WorldNetDaily, 9/17/09]
New American: Jennings is "devious," "career homosexual activist" with "subversive agenda." Calling on Jennings "to be expelled from the nation's classrooms," William Jasper wrote that Jennings "admits to using deception when pushing a subversive agenda that would be rigorously opposed by the vast majority of Americans if honestly promoted under its true colors." Jasper added, "What is Jennings agenda? Promoting homosexuality (in all its various permutations) under the guise of promoting 'safe schools.' " Jasper wrote that Jennings intends to use his position in the administration "to greatly expand the GLSEN program of subverting and perverting their captive public-school audience." Jasper wrote of Jennings' 1995 speech, "It is this deviousness of Jennings and GLSEN & Co. that is most alarming, especially now that they have captured citadels of power inside the massive federal bureaucracy of the U.S. Department of Education and appear to have the full blessings of the Obama White House to work their way with our children." [New American, 9/11/09]
Conservative media distort Jennings' remark about "promoting homosexuality"
Conservative media echo FRC's "Stop Jennings" campaign. Media conservatives' baseless claim that Jennings "promoted homosexuality in schools" echoes the Family Research Council's "Stop Jennings" campaign, which quoted Jennings saying during October 25, 1997, remarks at GLSEN's mid-Atlantic conference, "I can envision a day when straight people say, 'So what if you're promoting homosexuality?' ... That is our mission from this day forward" [ellipsis in original].
But Jennings actually expressed hope that some day "most straight people ... wouldn't necessarily equate homosexuality with something bad." FRC distorted Jennings' remarks, as the blog Good As You noted. In his remarks, Jennings was actually calling for tolerance; he talked about countering "stereotypes and misinformation" in order to change peoples' views about homosexuality over time and stated that GLSEN's "mission from this day forward" was "[t]o not lose our faith, to not lose our belief that the world can, indeed, be a different place." Jennings also spoke in reference to a day when "most straight people, when they would hear that someone was promoting homosexuality ... wouldn't necessarily equate homosexuality with something bad that you would not want to promote" and "a day when straight people say, 'So what if you're promoting homosexuality?' Or straight kids say, 'Hey, why don't you and your boyfriend come over before you go to the prom and try on your tuxes on at my house?' " Peter LaBarbera, president of a group that seeks to "expos[e] and counter the homosexual activist agenda," published a transcript of Jennings' 1997 remarks that LaBarbera said were reprinted from the Lambda Report.
From LaBarbera's transcript of Jennings' remarks, with the portions FRC quoted in bold:
JENNINGS: Two years ago, one of our board members, one named Ann Simon, was called to testify before Congress when they had hearings on the promotion of homosexuality in schools. And we were busy putting out press releases, and saying, 'We're not promoting homosexuality, that's not what our program's about. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.' And my best friend, who's a straight women [sic] who lives in London, e-mailed me ... and she said, 'So what if you are?' And I thought of how I can get so wrapped up in my own defensiveness, and ... the day-to-day struggle, and stuff, that being finished might some day mean that most straight people, when they would hear that someone was promoting homosexuality, would say 'Yeah, who cares?' because they wouldn't necessarily equate homosexuality with something bad that you would not want to promote. And when we were talking there, and Mike said, 'You know, and I'd like five years from now -- right now let's face it, for large swells of people they think of GLSEN and kids, and they think, 'GLSEN is bad for kids.' They do because of their stereotypes and misinformation -- I'd like five years from now for most Americans when they hear the word GLSEN to think, 'Ooh, that's good for kids.''
[...]
JENNINGS: All of us who are thinking this way are crazy, because you know what? Sane people keep the world the same [sh*tty] old way it is now. It's the people who think, 'No, I can envision a day when straight people say, 'So what if you're promoting homosexuality?' Or straight kids say, 'Hey, why don't you and your boyfriend come over before you go to the prom and try on your tuxes on at my house?' That if we believe that can happen, we can make it happen. The only thing that will stop us is our lack of faith that we can make it happen. That is our mission from this day forward. To not lose our faith, to not lose our belief that the world can, indeed, be a different place.
Conservative media misrepresent Jennings' remarks about religion
Think Progress: Jennings indicated that "he later returned to religion," and he went on to join a Protestant seminary. Many media figures have claimed that Jennings, in Kilmeade's words, "has expressed contempt for religion" -- which is based on a statement Jennings made in his memoir, Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son, and has also been a component of FRC's campaign against Jennings. FRC quoted a passage from Jennings' memoir, in which Jennings writes: "God ... had done nothing but cause me pain and anguish through His inaction and malevolence throughout my childhood. ... What had he done for me, other than make me feel shame and guilt? Squat. Screw you, buddy -- I don't need you around anymore, I decided. " However, as the blog Think Progress noted, FRC ignored "what Jennings writes a few sentences later: that he later returned to religion." Think Progress also noted that Jennings "went on to serve as an active member on the board of the Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York, the nation's most prestigious Protestant seminary."
Good post, BTW...
History shows that, absent of legal restraint, Christians have very little compunction whatsoever about killing even other Christians who disagree with them. From the Crusades, to the Inquisition in Spain, to the numerous Religious wars in England, to the conquest of the American Continents, to the Witch trials in Salem to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, to the murder of Harvey Milk, Matthew Sheppard and Geogre Tiller.
If anythone thinks that anything other then the law stops Christian radicals from killing their opponents, there are a few million corpses anywhere from 1 to 1000 years old that say otherwise.
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Church and State are like Wives and Girlfriends: No good can come from their meeting!
However, to conflate them with some vast terrorist network of Islamic fundamentalist radical nuts operating out of caves and planning and plotting to destroy thousands and thousands of people they hate by flying planes of innocent citizens into buildings and blowing up subways is flat out nonsense, fear mongering lunacy. If you believe the threats are equivalent in any way, shape or form, then I feel sorry for you.
I think back to the cartoons of Mohammed, which caused a huge uproar, and think those who would burn down publishing houses because of a cartoon are zealots. Same with people who were so violently opposed to The Last Temptation of Christ. I did not see the movie, but Hollywood is free to tell whatever story they want, because it will not affect what I know to be true.
All the name calling and exaggerations on both sides is pointless and encourages a cycle of bad behavior and hatred also on all sides. Someone has to take the higher ground instead of this endless race to the bottom.
I'd change that to "History shows that, even with legal restraint, people have very little compunction whatsoever about killing even other people who disagree with them."
Since, I mean, it isn't like Christians are the only religion where members kill people, even with a strict prohibition written into their religious tenets about not killing. Nor is it that only those who are religious kill people.
If you're going to decide to name historical events where Christians killed people, I can just as easily name them where Christians were killed. Christians having their throats slit in Turkey, gunmen attacking churches in Pakistan, and that's just to name a few. And most of those are more recent than quite a few you name, if I decide to go back more than, say, 10 years, I could easily compile a ridiculously huge amount of casualties. I mean, even the Crusades were a response to a call to help because the Byzantine Empire was being attacked by Muslims.
I am a Christian and like you I have no scientific proof of when life begins. I choose to select conception as that time, because to choose another point in the timeline without irrefutable evidence to the contrary means that I COULD unknowingly kill a human being. Does that position to perhaps err of the side of not wanting to inadvertently end a human life reflect the description you have put forward of what a Christian is? I think you might consider less postering and more dialouge with your philosophical opposites.
Right. So slavery is OK and women are to be treated as property. How....Christian of you.
They'd rather see these kids dead than accepted. That's the simple fact of it.
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They just don't care about them. PERIOD.
Well... except one... but she was just a real pain in the @$$. Had nothing to do with her being gay though! LOL
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I just don't understand homophobia. I just don't get it.
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I just don't understand it.
Singling out Sean Hanity is way too easy, everyone can trot out an example of a person who does not like this or that. I can just as easily point to liberal liars on MSNBC or Huffington Post. I do read and watch news from a variety of angles, something far too few do. I get a kick for example of people who trash Hanity or Glen Beck but never actually watch them, instead passing along hearsay without checking facts like the boiling frog story from last week. Yes they are both sensationalizing entertainers not reporters. So I give both a lot of leeway. As I do with other entertainers who pretend to be news reporters on liberal leaning news. So while I offer no excuses for Hanity or Beck I also offer none for Michael Moore, Huffington or a number of others who regularly stretch, lie or manipulate the facts to get people excited and enraged. Thats what they get paid to do. No one would read a moderate and fair news paper or watch a truly balanced and impartial news program. Nor do I take most of them too seriously either examining many sources you can often find the real true which is often not nearly as sizzling as either side tries to make it. What scares me is those who only get their information from a few sources preaching to their choir.
I guess Rush is talking about himself here. I mean who is enslaved to "sensualism" (appetites of the body) more than Rush, eh? Big cigars, food, wine, drugs and from what some say.......sex. With whom we don't exactly know. And I won't speculate.
But this eejit on steroids is a fine one to be talking about sensualism, never mind morality.
Does anybody else wish Obama was even a little tiny bit left, forget being "the furthest left"?
Soon, I hope, he will leave the Republicans behind, take the reins of the Democratic Party firmly in hand, and get some serious work done. There is much to do, and time is fleet footed.
They're doing somewhat the same thing with his story about the 16 year-old he mentioned in his 2000 speech. There is far too much that we don't know about that situation to make broad judgments about Jennings.
There must not be video of this, otherwise Hannity surely would have cropped "...we are after their kids" and had a manufactured conniption.
That folks is beyond dispute. Jennings did not measure up. Is he the best person we can find here? Let's hope not.
I despise narrow-minded sheep, the selfish, liars, manipulators, grandstanding, rudeness, power-mongers, and those who wish to control or lord over others for any reason.
I value wisdom and selflessness, and those who serve others. I don't care about any other personal identifiers and am happy for others happiness, please don't infringe upon mine or my freedoms. And for goodness sake why do so many need to broadcast what really should be personal and private. Live you life, let me live mine and we both can be at peace. DOn't impose your world views on others and I will not impose mine on others either.
Fox News' Sean [Klan]nity is setting back laughing at all the suckers who help make this News. This is more stupidity coming from the right.
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Fox News make it clear that they are going after Obama and his administration? So why are they falling for this foolishness, disguised as News? This is nothing more than Bill Ayers and Rev Wright guilt by association BS. Fox News should be the story, not Jennings. FOX News is masterminding and creating News and calling it "controversy" or a "scandal" for the sole purpose of making other people look bad. This is not right and they should be held accountable.
MMFA just figures if they use Glenn Beck's name it'll whip all you guys up in a big freny!
Classic